Junqueira started racing karts in Brazil and dominated Formula Three Sudamericana before moving to Formula 3000. He tested for the Williams Formula One team for many years and came close to landing a race drive in 2000, losing out to Jenson Button. He rebounded from this setback, winning that year's International Formula 3000 Championship.
In 2001, Junqueira joined Chip Ganassi Racing in the CART Championship Car series, capturing a win in his fourteenth race and finishing second in points. In 2002, he had two wins and finished second in points. In 2003, following Ganassi’s move to the Indy Racing League, Junqueira joined Newman/Haas Racing in the Champ Car World Series. He captured series runner-up honors in 2003 and 2004, with two wins in each of those seasons. He drove in the Indianapolis 500 four times for both Ganassi and Newman/Haas, qualifying on pole position in 2002 and finishing fifth twice.
During the 2005 Indianapolis 500, Junqueira crashed head-on into the turn two wall after passing backmarker A. J. Foyt IV, but Foyt inattentively did not see Junqueira's car under him and struck his right-rear corner. He suffered a concussion and a fractured vertebrae, missing the remainder of the 2005 Champ Car season. At the time, Junqueira was the Champ Car points leader, having won the second race of the year in Monterrey, Mexico. Veteran Oriol Servia took his place and finished runner-up in the standings.
In 2006, Junqueira returned to the cockpit at Newman/Haas but did not win a race, finishing fifth in the championship while his teammate Sébastien Bourdais won his third straight title. He was replaced in the second Newman/Haas car in 2007 by rookie Graham Rahal and signed to drive for Dale Coyne Racing as teammate to Katherine Legge. Junqueira finished seventh in the championship, including three consecutive podium finishes late in the season.
Prior to the 2008 Indycar Series Season, Champ Car unified with the rival Indy Racing League. Junqueira drove the No. 18 car for the Coyne team's first season in the new series, alongside Brazilian rookie Mario Moraes. His Indianapolis 500 was ruined by a mirror falling off, causing him to lose three laps during repairs. He finished twentieth overall that season, with only two top ten finishes, both on road courses. In 2009, he made a deal with Conquest Racing for the Indianapolis 500 and qualified the car on Bump Day, but was asked to withdraw for the team's regular driver Alex Tagliani, who had failed to qualify his car due to a technical failure. In 2011, driving for A. J. Foyt Racing, Junqueira qualified his car for the 500 in nineteenth position, only to once again have to give up his chance to drive in the actual race. Foyt sold the unsponsored car's entry to Andretti Autosport, whose driver Ryan Hunter-Reay had been the final car bumped from the field. In 2012, he entered in for an injured Josef Newgarden at the first Grand Prix of Baltimore.
Includes points scored by other Team Brazil drivers.
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)
(key)
^ New points system implemented in 2004.
1 Races run on same day. 2 Non-points-paying, exhibition race.
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Ineligible for championship points.
† Did not complete sufficient laps in order to score points.
This article is based on information from Wikipedia. Primary sources, such as autobiographies, period programmes, and specialist publications, were not consulted.
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